If Tonga goes ahead and adopts daylight savings this year from October to March, advancing its clock one hour ahead of everyone else in the region, it will be the first in the race to clock-in the Millennium.

But it could mean that Tonga will experience the Y2K computer problem an hour before anyone else.

“We will be the Y2K guinea pig. But the Y2K problem will still be with us, disregarding whether we advance our clocks an hour ahead, or remain as we are,” said Siaosi Sovaleni, the community Y2K advisor.

Siaosi, however, was confident that businesses and individuals had upgraded their computers to become Y2K compliant.

The final decision on whether or not Tonga will go GMT+14 this summer had not been made by the end of August, although an enabling act was in place.

The Tonga Legislative Assembly on July 1 this year passed an Amendment to the Interpretation Act, Vol. 1, clause 20, to allow Tonga to introduce daylight saving. The Bill was presented by the Attorney General and Minister of Law Tevita Tupou who told the House that it “had a bearing on tourism in 2000 because both New Zealand and Fiji have daylight saving”. There was little debate on the bill before it was passed by the House to go to Cabinet for approval.

This Bill, however, had not been signed by the King or gazetted so it had not passed into Law, while there were still arguments for it and against it in government.

Tonga will have to notify Greenwich before October if they wanted to adopt daylight saving this year.